Prior proposed filling and weighing stations for boxing or packaging flowable material and various types of produce such as potatoes have been constructed and arranged to act as independent box filling and weighing units each with its own separate box in-feed conveyor means and its own box discharge conveyor means. A plurality of such independently operable box filling and weighing units may be installed in a plant and may be fed from either common or independent material feed conveyors.
In some prior proposed box filling and weighing constructions, a plurality of boxes were treated as a group. In other words, a group of six boxes were fed along a path, the group of six boxes simultaneously laterally transferred to a filling zone, and when all of the six boxes of the group were filled and weighed the six filled boxes were moved as a group from the filling zone and conveyed as a group to a discharge or distribution area. Some of the prior patents disclosing machines for handling a plurality of boxes as a group are U.S. Letters Pat. Nos. 607,472, 1,140,915, 2,100,874, and 2,333,790. Since groups of boxes were treated as units, break down of one of the filling machines would delay the movement of the other five boxes even though they may be filled and the filling machine may be in operable order to receive successive boxes for filling. In addition, handling six boxes as a group unit required that six individual or discrete pieces of apparatus must be employed and coordinated so that the six boxes could be moved and displaced as a unit. To achieve such unitary movement of a group of six discrete boxes, careful timing and coordination was required so that simultaneous actuation could be achieved.
Where the desirable projected rate of filling and weighing boxes with a flowable produce requires a plurality of filling and weighing stations, it is desirable that the plant area devoted to such filling and weighing operations occupy and utilize only that plant area required for such a filling and weighing operation and that maximum efficiency and effectiveness be provided in the utilization of such plant area. In the prior proposed filling and weighing machines mentioned above, the use of a plurality of individual machines with a plurality of individual box in-feed conveyors and a plurality of individual box discharge conveyors occupied more plant space than necessary for an efficient, effective filling and weighing operation. The treatment of a plurality of boxes at the unit served to reduce the maximum plant space area to some extent. A more efficient and effective utilization of plant space area for a box filling and weighing operation is proposed by the apparatus and method of this invention as will be described hereafter.